Screenshot Saturday Featuring CometStriker, Rival Megagun, Many More

Screenshot Saturday is back to normal now that the holidays are over, but “normal” is a relative term. Each week is an update from hundreds of developers on how their games have progressed, with images and animations (mostly animations) showing off details, mechanics, art treatments, and anything else that might have happened during the course of creation. The Screenshot Saturday hashtag collects it all under one handy banner, but it’s a lot to sort through so this feature pulls about a dozen or so from the pile. There’s plenty worth seeing left behind, of course, so its always worth a browse to see if anything that didn’t make it here catches your fancy. And as per usual, the images have a lot more to show if you give them a click to let them live.

Sentinels- Tower defense/FPS where you array your forces as the enemy politely streams in on the city roads, then hop into the action to provide personal support for your automated defenses. Next up- VR support.

Adventure Pals- A young boy and his backpack-giraffe set out on a platforming adventure that also involves beating on bear/bull/deer hybrids. Backpack-giraffe has zero patience for hideous monstrosities of nature despite being one itself.

https://twitter.com/Sheepy_Games/status/949670599244308514

The Signal- One of those “not a lot of information”-type games, but the overall plot is that of humanity reacting to the unknown as it starts receiving messages from the stars. Every bit as importantly it’s got fantastic vector-style art with nice glitching effects, which improve any game they appear in.

FlyPunchBoom- Aerial brawler with weird fighters and massive destruction. The medusa-snake may need to learn some range-based tactics, specifically that a super move is best started close enough to avoid giving its opponent all the time in the world to counter.

Unnamed- Platformer relentlessly designed to look like the best of the old gray/greenscreen gameboy era, or at least the games as we might remember them rather than as they actually were. Even ignoring the complexity of the art, the dust from landing and steam effect coming off the pipe are nothing the durable old handheld had the resolution for. But it feels right, and that’s the important part.

https://twitter.com/AlexBarnhartMA/status/949651673269534720

Unnamed- While the visuals get the bulk of the attention, audio doesn’t just magically appear and frequently requires turning several different sources into a single cohesive whole. Nothing like a little arctic blast lasting for what feels like endless weeks to inspire the cold and crunchy sounds of an icy blast.

CometStriker- Single-screen arcade shooter. Jetpack around the levels, collect gems, clear out all the enemies, and use the dash to zip through the bullet hell, then fly through the exit to get to the next challenge. It’s practically begging for a coin slot on the front.

Little Adventure Hunter- No idea, seeing as there are a total of two tweets on the whole feed, but based on a super-early preview video it seems to be an action-RPG. While these fighters are smaller than a full-size screenshot, so a little of the low-polygon look gets lost, there’s something of a stop-motion animation feel to their movements that makes me want to play a Rankin/Bass fantasy adventure game.

https://twitter.com/spacewavesoft/status/949793399120343040

Rival Megagun- Competitive shooter, like a fusion of Cho Ren Sha 68k (the fire pattern of the ship on the left in particular) with Twinkle Star Sprites. Shooting down certain enemies sends them over to bother your opponent, and when you build up the charge meter you can transform into a both to rain bullet death their way.

Last Man Sitting- This has been a concept without a game for a while, or at least not one that’s been clearly explained, but now it all makes sense. Or as much as a game about using the recoil of heavy firepower to scoot an rolling chair around an office while using the momentum to send a giant squishy orange ball into an exploding goal could make sense. Videogame logic is, and this can’t be overstated, the best kind of logic.

Project Flare- 2D action platformer being developed by a cartoonist, which explains the slick character design and exaggerated but expressive animations. Seeing as the walls are all grey rectangles with the word “wall” scribbled on them, it can’t be understated just how early in development this is, with most of the work currently going towards animating the main character.

Puppy Chef Academy- Learn to cook in VR, or at least learn the basic techniques. As a cat at an all-dog cooking academy you might have a bit of trouble fitting in, but with practice, attention to detail, and the careful use of VR motion controls you should pick up a bit of skill at putting the dishes together properly. There’s a demo for this one over at the game’s web site.

Peace Island- Open-world… explorer? Maybe there’s a mystery of some sort? Hard to tell right now, but at the moment it’s an island under construction slowly becoming the setting for some type of game. The name is a play on Peaks Island, off the coast of Portland Maine, and your trivia for today is that the last Trauma Center game, Trauma Team, was also set in Portland. Also, while Peaks Island gets the tourists, and has an old fort you can explore that’s great fun to poke around in, the best beach is a short ferry ride away on the ocean-facing side of Long Island.